There is a valedictory tone in this book that is not wholly caused by Ned's approaching retirement. The cold war is over, the old enemies have been replaced by glasnost and perestroika, and for Mr. le Carré himself it must have been a bizarre experience to see the raw material of his art disintegrate over the last few years. But the spies, we can be sure, will never be made redundant. At the end of the novel, decent, honorable Ned encounters a particularly nasty specimen of the new antagonists -- an utterly cynical and amoral British millionaire entrepreneur and arms dealer, and a knight, to boot. He is a perfect embodiment of the so-called market forces dogma of the Thatcher years in its most brutish form. "Now we had defeated Communism, we were going to have to set about defeating capitalism," Ned reflects. One senses a new foe emerging, new battles for the Circus to fight.